Where did you hear that?
From Amazon: "Upgrade Path Alert for Snow Leopard
Please note, that only Apple OS X Leopard users are eligible for the Snow Leopard upgrade. Tiger & earlier OS users will need to purchase either versions of the upgraded Mac Box Set."

Walt Mossberg, in his Wall Street Journal review of SL, reported Apple conceded to him that the SL upgrade works with Tiger, too, without purchasing the interim version. I'm pretty sure AI carried that report.

Do you seriously believe that? The prices are what they are not because of piracy, but because design and print shops need the software and are willing and able to pay that price. Individuals pirating this software are not forcing the prices up; they would never have the means to purchase it anyway.

Since when has that ever been legal or moral jusification for theft? Using your logic car hijacking should be legal because he the poor creep can't afford to buy his own. Maybe squaring in your home or apartment should be legal too, after all the scum bag can't afford it because he is to lazy to get a job. After all you just stated that theft based on lack of means is not an issue.

Frankly I'm not sure why Appleinsider doesn't have a policy of banning people that advocate such stupidity. From my point of view it is a grossness society doesn't need.

Except that argument doesn't take into account the money software companies like Adobe have to pay for lawyers and the BSA to fight people who steal their property (and thus their IP including copyright, trademark, patents, etc...), thus raising their costs which - you guessed it - goes back into the prices of the product. ...

While you might have a point about piracy adding to software costs in the general sense, in the context of the original argument about Adobe software in particular, you are dead wrong here.

The high price of Adobe software is directly related to the monopoly they have and the fact that they can get almost whatever they ask from the high end shops that use it. The aggregation of all decent design software in the hands of a single company (Adobe), is the direct cause of the high prices, just as the same thing occurs with Windows. They are the classic "cash cows."

The end consumer is not served by monopolies in any way, they always lead to high prices, poor quality, and poor service. This is exactly what you see from Adobe today.

While you might have a point about piracy adding to software costs in the general sense, in the context of the original argument about Adobe software in particular, you are dead wrong here.

The high price of Adobe software is directly related to the monopoly they have and the fact that they can get almost whatever they ask from the high end shops that use it. The aggregation of all decent design software in the hands of a single company (Adobe), is the direct cause of the high prices, just as the same thing occurs with Windows. They are the classic "cash cows."

The end consumer is not served by monopolies in any way, they always lead to high prices, poor quality, and poor service. This is exactly what you see from Adobe today.

Again, could not have said it better myself. Adobe has known for probably years what Apples software path is and yet there are compatibility issues. I'm hearing (very little) but that CS5 which hopefully takes advantage of SL technologies won't be out until 2011. WTF ! I'm running a maxed out Mac Pro and Illustrator is sluggish. What do I get with an upgrade; a new brush tool or a change in UI which takes weeks to understand. I just don't think Adobe understands it's user's. I want a fast, reliable program that doesn't crash twice a day, not a bunch of added stuff I'll never use.

Come to think of it...Adobe needs to do what Apple just did. Instead of adding a bunch of new pointless crap they should take CS4 and optimize the hell out of it, multi thread, 64 bit, no bugs or crashes.

... So when we have to pay more for our tools because of pirating, ...

This is not true at all. This is what Adobe tells you is the cause of the high price so you direct your anger at the pirates and not at them.

Piracy is a problem in general that *sometimes* raises costs for manufacturers, but it's a minor effect and definitely not the cause of Adobe's high prices. Adobe's prices are high because they ask for what they know they can get (from you).

For example, Apple's "piracy problem" with all their software is orders of magnitude higher than Adobe's and yet their software is orders of magnitude *lower* in price. Apple doesn't make software as a "loss leader" and they do make a profit on it.

Adobe is engaging in a classic monopoly position here and all of their behaviours are "textbook" monopolistic behaviours.

Their product is buggy and poorly designed, their "customer" is not the end user but the high end graphics business, both the organisation itself and the software it produces is bloated and over-wrought, and the prices it charges are based on what the market can bear, not on any kind of value/cost proposition.

The following applications are moved to the "Incompatible Software" folder by default upon installation:

Silicon Image SiI3132 Drivers ver. 1.5.16.0

Well that makes Snow Leopard a no-go for me given that I keep all of my work on an eSATA drive. Both the eSATA Expresscard I use in my MacBook Pro and the eSATA PCIe card I use in my Mac Pro are based around the Sil3132 chipset. Hopefully this is resolved soon...

All these utilities, most users don't need or want. As long major applications are functioning, who cares about EyeTV? I don't. Why do I need Norton Virus on my Mac? Norton? I have not touched Norton since System 7.

And whatever the initial problem, it will all be worked out in few weeks by the companies that created them. And that makes me wonder why these companies didn't update their softwares all this time that the OS was in development. The answer is simple; they just want you to buy the latest copy.

Okay... I am not advocating piracy I realize from my many years on personal computers... I started off on a PET CBM (not exactly a PC) but it drove me to my first Vic-20 and then things just snowballed.

Anyway... Piracy is a odd bird...

Some people get the 'bug' to be a collector of software. I knew many of them when I was growing up. They had every software program you could ever imagine, most you'd never heard of! The kids didn't use the stuff... but they HAD the floppies!

Obsessive compulsive works quite well.

Now... a 12 year old downloading "Stedman's Medical Dictionary 27th Edition, with Veterinary Medicine Insert" does WHAT to the bottom line of the publisher? Nothing, when you look at it superficially! So in the pirates eyes:

"I would have never bought it in the first place and had little to no use for it, It didn't hurt anyone and I certainly didn't cost the company any money"

HOWEVER

The fact that the title was in some way openly available for download does hurt the company because if a snot nosed 12 year old can get it, then it's also an avenue that a less then reputable doctor might use to pump up the bottom line of is fledgeling practice.

And THAT does hurt the bottom line...

So yea me downloading a $20k engineering CAD software system wouldn't translate into a $20k loss for the published since I wouldn't even begin to know what to actually do with it. However, the fact that I could get it means so can people who normally would be potential customers.

Two sides of the same coin and unfortunately for the 'recreational pirate' (he who has the most complete collection of useless crapware wins) side of the coin can't be separated from cheapskate who wants a free ride.

The aggregation of all decent design software in the hands of a single company (Adobe), is the direct cause of the high prices, just as the same thing occurs with Windows. They are the classic "cash cows."

This part is unfortunate for consumers, but if you follow the history of DTP all the way back from invention of Adobe Postscript, Illustrator and later Photoshop there were never any serious competitors in those areas. The applications that became the pinnacle of the DTP business were the page layout programs namely Quark and Pagemaker. Adobe didn't have any layout programs so their purchase of Aldus Pagemaker was not considered anti-competitive because Aldus Freehand, a competitor to Illustrator, was not part of the deal.

Fast forward to the acquisition of Macromedia, although Adobe previously attempted to compete with MM in a number of areas they were entirely unsuccessful so they decided to purchased the whole company. How could the Feds prevent it? There was no anti-competitive issues because Adobe's lame efforts to develop products that tried to competed with Flash & Dreamweaver were complete failures and again Freehand was not part of the deal.

So yes it is unfortunate that it turned out that Adobe owns all of the decent design software but the 'cash cow' so to speak is the Postscript language, which they invented, and is the foundation of Acrobat which is probably the most widely used software on the planet. So basically to summarize, I'm arguing that Adobe earned their current status be it good or bad.

The reason there are no competitors is that there is nothing that even comes close in features and quality to Adobe products. Plenty of companies have tried over the years but so far no one has been successful in changing the hearts and minds of the professional designers.

Where did you hear that?
From Amazon: "Upgrade Path Alert for Snow Leopard
Please note, that only Apple OS X Leopard users are eligible for the Snow Leopard upgrade. Tiger & earlier OS users will need to purchase either versions of the upgraded Mac Box Set."

real world is usually different

MS did the exact same thing in the 1990's with windows. you could boot of a win98 upgrade CD and a blank hard drive and it would prompt you for the earlier version CD or floppies. i think they stopped it with Vista or XP, but not sure

in some of their products in the 1990's all you had to do was put all 1's for the key. it was all planned for people to pirate some copies to get devs to develop more apps for the increased user base

This is not true at all. This is what Adobe tells you is the cause of the high price so you direct your anger at the pirates and not at them.

Piracy is a problem in general that *sometimes* raises costs for manufacturers, but it's a minor effect and definitely not the cause of Adobe's high prices. Adobe's prices are high because they ask for what they know they can get (from you).

For example, Apple's "piracy problem" with all their software is orders of magnitude higher than Adobe's and yet their software is orders of magnitude *lower* in price. Apple doesn't make software as a "loss leader" and they do make a profit on it.

Adobe is engaging in a classic monopoly position here and all of their behaviours are "textbook" monopolistic behaviours.

Their product is buggy and poorly designed, their "customer" is not the end user but the high end graphics business, both the organisation itself and the software it produces is bloated and over-wrought, and the prices it charges are based on what the market can bear, not on any kind of value/cost proposition.

This is not true at all. This is what Adobe tells you is the cause of the high price so you direct your anger at the pirates and not at them.

Piracy is a problem in general that *sometimes* raises costs for manufacturers, but it's a minor effect and definitely not the cause of Adobe's high prices. Adobe's prices are high because they ask for what they know they can get (from you).

For example, Apple's "piracy problem" with all their software is orders of magnitude higher than Adobe's and yet their software is orders of magnitude *lower* in price. Apple doesn't make software as a "loss leader" and they do make a profit on it.

Adobe is engaging in a classic monopoly position here and all of their behaviours are "textbook" monopolistic behaviours.

Their product is buggy and poorly designed, their "customer" is not the end user but the high end graphics business, both the organisation itself and the software it produces is bloated and over-wrought, and the prices it charges are based on what the market can bear, not on any kind of value/cost proposition.

Well I think it's pretty clear that you have a beef with Adobe, which is fine.

However, I wasn't dealing in absolutes which you seem to be trying to stuff down my mouth. Obviously the high price of their software isn't totally to do with piracy, I would never make such an outlandish and obviously stupid claim. I don't get how piracy can only "sometimes" raise costs for software developers if it is happening all the time, but I digress.

Apple's piracy problem is only higher because they don't use activation on their software (at least none that I use) for better or worse. Frankly I think they are trying to copy Microsoft's approach to let (well look the other way anyways) people pirate it so that their market share increases. My guess would be that Snow Leopard at $29 will be a loss leader, if not initially, than over time with support costs, etc. Safari is a loss leader because Apple doesn't charge for it.

Also I contest that Adobe is a monopoly, on the same grounds that many here claim Apple doesn't hold a monopoly: They have competition from Corel, Quark, Open Source, and many others. Those others may not be "as good" or as predominately in use as Adobe's products, but that is enough to disclaim a monopoly at least legally, and one would think, indicate that a good number of people think that Adobe's software has value and is useful in their business.

That being said, if Corel produced software that was better than Adobe's and everyone started using it, we'd drop Adobe in a second.

Since when has that ever been legal or moral jusification for theft? Using your logic car hijacking should be legal because he the poor creep can't afford to buy his own. Maybe squaring in your home or apartment should be legal too, after all the scum bag can't afford it because he is to lazy to get a job. After all you just stated that theft based on lack of means is not an issue.

Frankly I'm not sure why Appleinsider doesn't have a policy of banning people that advocate such stupidity. From my point of view it is a grossness society doesn't need.

Dave

Unfortunately, there will always be liars, cheaters and thieves. To rationalize that it's OK to steal if you don't want to save up to buy a produce is just plain crazy and wrong.

Using stolen software is immoral and there is no way to justify stealing.

Except that argument doesn't take into account the money software companies like Adobe have to pay for lawyers and the BSA to fight people who steal their property (and thus their IP including copyright, trademark, patents, etc...), thus raising their costs which - you guessed it - goes back into the prices of the product. Nor does take into account the additional costs of support from the number of users who use their product, legally or not, such as bandwidth for software updates, extra support to the designers and printers who service people who may be pirating software, etc...

Ah yes, the lame a$$ excuse by nonpirates.

Truth is that software companies may spend a few % of their income to pay for overhead that keeps piracy at bay. But they will jack up the price 10%, 20% or more and blame it on pirates. In the meanwhile you, the sucker, gets shafted because of your misguided sense of right and wrong. Be smart, pirate.

Obviously the high price of their software isn't totally to do with piracy, I would never make such an outlandish and obviously stupid claim. I don't get how piracy can only "sometimes" raise costs for software developers if it is happening all the time, but I digress.

Companies like adobe price their software as high as possible without losing too many customers. They aren't operating on razor thin margins such that production costs directly influence list price. This is especially true for companies with monopolies or near-monopolies.

This means that piracy is not raising the price of photoshop. Infact, it might actually be decreasing the price by showing adobe that some customers aren't willing to pay the current asking price.

The "sometimes" part comes in because not every company is in this situation. Many software titles are barely profitable and are up against stiff competition. These companies might want to raise the price to fully cover salaries without going into debt, or perhaps lower the price to undercut competitors. These are the companies and programs for which piracy might impact the price paid by actual customers.

"Sometimes" might also refer to the fact that a large percentage of pirates are children and college students who want to tinker with the software but would never buy the software. If these people suddenly had no way of pirating, they would never consider buying a copy. Ironically, these pirates are actually good for adobe. Adobe should be hoping that highschool students pirate photoshop to make embarrassing pictures of their friends. By the time those students graduate and have money to spend, the only image editing software they'll want will be photoshop.

I wonder if there will be an easy way to see which prframs run on Rosetta? I didn't install it when I installed the GM last week, and quite a few porgrams asked for it. Now this confuses me as is my machine, booting to full 64 or is Rosetta asking for programs, surprisingly, for just ppc apps. I say surprisingly as I would have thought theses apps were a long time running in/on intel chips, which now has confused me. Ironically, up until just the other day, if the program said it needed to install Rosetta, it always faied, wasn't until two dats ago that Rosetta was put "on line".

I will give you the bottom line. I've been using the final build of SL for some time and Photoshop CS3 totally blows chunks with it. Things like opening with differing color profiles, save for web, etc... the list goes on. I put on CS4 and all is well. Don't upgrade to SL unless you are ready to go right to CS4. No kidding.

Adobe issued a statement a couple days ago stating, "No one said anything about CS3 being 'not supported' on Snow Leopard. The plan, however, is not to take resources away from other efforts (e.g. porting Photoshop to Cocoa) in order to modify 2.5-year-old software in response to changes Apple makes in the OS foundation."

Okay... I am not advocating piracy I realize from my many years on personal computers... I started off on a PET CBM (not exactly a PC) but it drove me to my first Vic-20 and then things just snowballed.

Anyway... Piracy is a odd bird...

Some people get the 'bug' to be a collector of software. I knew many of them when I was growing up. They had every software program you could ever imagine, most you'd never heard of! The kids didn't use the stuff... but they HAD the floppies!

Obsessive compulsive works quite well.

Now... a 12 year old downloading "Stedman's Medical Dictionary 27th Edition, with Veterinary Medicine Insert" does WHAT to the bottom line of the publisher? Nothing, when you look at it superficially! So in the pirates eyes:

"I would have never bought it in the first place and had little to no use for it, It didn't hurt anyone and I certainly didn't cost the company any money"

HOWEVER

The fact that the title was in some way openly available for download does hurt the company because if a snot nosed 12 year old can get it, then it's also an avenue that a less then reputable doctor might use to pump up the bottom line of is fledgeling practice.

And THAT does hurt the bottom line...

So yea me downloading a $20k engineering CAD software system wouldn't translate into a $20k loss for the published since I wouldn't even begin to know what to actually do with it. However, the fact that I could get it means so can people who normally would be potential customers.

Two sides of the same coin and unfortunately for the 'recreational pirate' (he who has the most complete collection of useless crapware wins) side of the coin can't be separated from cheapskate who wants a free ride.

Dave

I was one of those 12 year-olds with a ton of floppies... how could I, at 12, afford software? The issue was, everybody I knew was doing it, so I thought it was the thing to do. In fact, I know where those floppies are now.

So, were they losing sales? Not really from me, since I could never pay for the software, yet, I used them so I should have paid, so in that sense, they did lose money. I didn't even know it was called "piracy." Though I always did notice the "cracked by" messages on some of the games...

As the owner of a design studio I want to upgrade my systems but still a little wary about compatibility with Adobe CS3. I think CS4 was not worth the upgrade at the time and have been happy with 3. Hopefully Adobe will catch up soon (wishful thinking)

Anyone had time to test and had luck with CS3 compatibility ? Particularly Illustrator + Hot door's Cad Tools plug in ?

Really wanting to upgrade to Snow Leopard but don't want our productivity to come to a screeching halt. Thanks for any feedback.

Quote:

Originally Posted by supremedesigner

You and I are on the same boat. I know PS CS3 worked OK. I was hoping all CS3 apps will work OK under SL. I'm not too happy about Adobe not testing CS3 even people bought it over a year ago.

CS4 isn't worth to upgrade either.

$29 isnt much of a cost and you will likely upgrade to SL eventually so why not just buy it and install it on a separate partition or internal or external HDD to test it out. Unlike with Leopard, its quite easy to install it anywhere you wish, even on an SD or USB flash drive. Then you migrate your settings and apps and test it out.

I can't seem to stop my MP or my MBP from receiving prompts every other day to "install an upgrade" of Application Enhancer. I can't figure out how to dump this stuff off my computer. Nothing in the system preference or the finder. Just this nagging prompt. Anyone know anything about this stuff?

Come to think of it...Adobe needs to do what Apple just did. Instead of adding a bunch of new pointless crap they should take CS4 and optimize the hell out of it, multi thread, 64 bit, no bugs or crashes.

I couldn't agree with you more. I will wait until 2011 for PS CS5. PS CS3 is all I need and CS4 never gave me anything extra that I really needed for my photography. I have never gotten the whole suite. I always thought that PS was overloaded anyway and should be optimized.

I bought the upgrade package with the other apps because iLife or iWork are especially more optimized for SL I would think and also because I skipped the '08 upgrade. As an extra note, I gave up Word a couple of years ago and am happy with Pages. It opens my older Word docs, anyway. But, I will wait to hear about the initial installers to see what I have to look forward to.

Except that argument doesn't take into account the money software companies like Adobe have to pay for lawyers and the BSA to fight people who steal their property (and thus their IP including copyright, trademark, patents, etc...), thus raising their costs which - you guessed it - goes back into the prices of the product. Nor does take into account the additional costs of support from the number of users who use their product, legally or not, such as bandwidth for software updates, extra support to the designers and printers who service people who may be pirating software, etc...

Yes, piracy (like all other theft) will always apply an upward pressure on prices for honest customers.

Many of the most important software concepts were invented in the 70s and forgotten in the 80s.

I am dumbfounded. I thought this new version of the OS was supposed to address the fundamental shortcomings and limitations having to do with the basic rendering of text as graphics on the screen. So far as I can tell, nothing has been fixed, and Apple's OS is still light years behind MS is this very fundamental, very important area. Is the rendering of text as graphics on a display not regarded by Apple as something that an OS should be concerned with? As supposed to, say, "native support" for Microsoft's Exchange?

You still have NO CONTROL over the font size used for menus and anything that appears on the screen that is not under the direct control of the application. The physical size of the font you see on the screen is determined by your screen resolution! This is absurd; it always has been absurd, AND I CANNOT BELIEVE THAT APPLE STILL HAS NOT CORRECTED THIS! They still expect those of us who can't see that well to accommodate by changing the screen resolution!

In addition to that, the supposed capability to turn off the font smoothing DOES NOT WORK. The screen for "Appearance" settings now looks different, in that you have a little check box for "Use LCD font smoothing when available". THIS SELECTION HAS NO EFFECT WHATSOEVER. This ought to allow you to fully disable the font smoothing by deselecting this box. BUT IT HAS ABSOLUTELY NO EFFECT! Whether the check box is or is not selected, YOU STILL CANNOT DISABLE FONT SMOOTHING FOR FONT SIZES GREATER THAN 12!!

Furthermore, SAFARI COMPLETELY IGNORES THE SYSTEM SETTING WHERE YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE ABLE TO DISABLE FONT SMOOTHING, AND APPLIES #$#@%% FONT SMOOTHING TO ALL FONTS NO MATTER HOW SMALL!!!!!!!

THIS IS GARBAGE!! THIS SHOULD HAVE BEEN CORRECTED A COUPLE OF DECADES AGO, AND THEY STILL HAVE NOT FIXED IT! WHEN ARE THEY EVER GOING TO FIX THIS NONSENSE? DO THEY REALLY THINK THAT ANYONE WHO HAS TROUBLE READING THE FONTS USED FOR MENUS OUGHT TO COMPENSATE BY CHANGING THE SCREEN RESOLUTION?? WHY DO THEY WANT TO PROHIBIT ME FROM DISABLING FONT SMOOTHING FOR FONT SIZES LARGER THAN 12?

! They still expect those of us who can't see that well to accommodate by changing the screen resolution!

Snow Leopard has added one feature for blind people, only available on notebooks, which turns the track pad into a speak each item tool, but overall Windows has always been a far superior environment for people who have vision problems. I'm assuming you are using the zoom with scroll wheel already.

You still have NO CONTROL over the font size used for menus and anything that appears on the screen that is not under the direct control of the application. The physical size of the font you see on the screen is determined by your screen resolution!

I am using Safari now and if I want to read a window with a bigger font, I just go command and + or I can spread my thumb and forefinger wider on the track pad. Yes, the font size jumps and you don't have a smooth transition. But, the point of this is just to be able to read the page text easier. To go smaller go the opposite with command and - ( minus ) to bring you back to the opening size and if you go too far it will get even smaller than normal. It is working now in the Reply to thread box as I type this.

When it comes to menus and all the fonts that my appear in any app, well maybe Apple is working on this. Have you made any direct suggestions to Apple: http://www.apple.com/feedback/
I use this when I do have an issue that effects me often.

Well that makes Snow Leopard a no-go for me given that I keep all of my work on an eSATA drive. Both the eSATA Expresscard I use in my MacBook Pro and the eSATA PCIe card I use in my Mac Pro are based around the Sil3132 chipset. Hopefully this is resolved soon...

Yes --

I have 15 1TB external hard drives - in 3 DAT Optic enclosures - and all of them running with a PCIe board that uses SiI3124_2.0.3.

I cannot use 10.6 until there is an eSATA card that will work with it.